The Unfinished Business of State-Owned Enterprise Reform in the People’S Republic of China
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Munich Personal RePEc Archive The Unfinished Business of State-owned Enterprise Reform in the People’s Republic of China Holz, Carsten A. Hong Kong University of Science Technology 2 December 2018 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/94093/ MPRA Paper No. 94093, posted 30 May 2019 20:24 UTC The Unfinished Business of State-owned Enterprise Reform in the People’s Republic of China Carsten A. Holz This paper examines the progress of state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform in the People’s Republic of China. After defining SOEs and considering their scope of operation within the PRC economy, the focus of the paper is on the major reform waves that followed the deterioration of SOE profitability in the early 1990s. The oil industry serves to illustrate industry-specific SOE reform trends as well as the latest reform developments. Until today, a stable, successful, long- term arrangement of state ownership has remained elusive. SOE reform is incomplete as long as a number of fundamental governance issues are not resolved. But these are difficult to resolve in the context of Party-controlled state-owned enterprises. Journal of Economic Literature classification: P00 Economic Systems: General P31 Socialist Enterprises and Their Transitions L20 Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior: General P26 Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies: Political Economy; Property Rights Additionally: D22 Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis L32 Public Enterprises; Public-Private Enterprises O25 Industrial Policy O53 Economywide Country Studies: Asia including Middle East Keywords: State-owned enterprise reform, People’s Republic of China, corporate governance, public enterprise management, Chinese Communist Party, state-owned asset management, industrial policy Carsten A. Holz Social Science Division Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong [email protected] http://carstenholz.people.ust.hk/ 2 December 2018 1 Summary State ownership dominated the pre-reform economy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The transition to a more market-oriented economy from 1978 onward triggered a deterioration in the finances of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) which eventually led to major SOE reforms in 1998-2000. Employment and losses were drastically reduced, and thousands of SOEs were merged or allowed to go bankrupt. In 2003, the remaining SOEs were organized under the newly established central State(-owned) Asset Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) or its provincial equivalents. Reform then continued within these institutions. SOEs transformed progressively into formal companies, underwent various forms of restructuring, and began to surrender some of their profit. By the late 2000s, SOEs came to be seen as instrumental in spearheading state industrial policies, an emphasis that subsequently weakened, with SOEs being crucial to only a few industrial policy areas today. By tightening (Chinese Communist) Party control over SOEs as well as private enterprises, the distinction in industrial policy became one of domestic vs. foreign enterprises rather than SOEs versus private enterprises. Since 2013, new SOE reform initiatives emerged; key among them was the promotion of mixed ownership, a new state capital management system, and various elements of a “modern enterprise system.” Bbut progress has been slow. By 2018, SOE reform discussions centered on strengthening Party control over SOEs and making SOEs “stronger, better, and bigger.” State ownership today accounts for little more than one-third of gross domestic product (GDP) and it is concentrated in typical public goods sectors such as public facilities, education, health, and public management. In manufacturing, SOEs account for only one-quarter of assets. The state has a monopoly position in petroleum and natural gas extraction, the tobacco industry, and electricity production/distribution and water supply. The state controls all banks and owns the three major airlines and all three telecommunication providers. Questions persist about the objectives of SOEs, ownership rights over SOEs, and SOE supervision. SOE objectives are ambiguous. SASAC’s ownership of the center’s state-owned conglomerates is exceedingly weak in that SASAC does not appoint key personnel of its companies, has only limited claims to SOE profits, has little regulatory authority, and seems preoccupied primarily with resolving problems in individual SOEs and supporting top-level industry priorities. To some extent, SASAC appears to be a smokescreen for the actual channels of authority and a convenient location in which to deposit (and make invisible) SOE problems. Supervision within SOEs is fraught when basic control mechanisms established by the Company Law are sidestepped through Party precedence. Adoption of the formal company system and mixed ownership reform have allowed (re-)capitalization of listed SOEs by means other than the state budget and state bank lending and thereby freed the state of some of the liability for SOE failure, but it has not necessarily led to good governance. Corporate governance in the PRC is ultimately a question of how the Party is to manage the state- owned Party-controlled enterprises in an environment where Western principles of good corporate governance are not an option. While past achievements may be impressive, current SOE performance suggests a dilemma in that an increasingly sophisticated economy exceeds the steering capacity of an authoritarian Leninist regime, while the correspondingly mature institutions needed to support a modern economy and to advance economic growth are missing. 2 Table of Contents I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 5 II. STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISE DEFINITION, EXTENT, AND PERFORMANCE ... 7 A. STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISE DATA ACROSS SOURCES ........................................................... 8 B. THE EXTENT OF STATE OWNERSHIP ACROSS THE ECONOMY ............................................... 10 C. STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISE PROFITABILITY (FINANCE MINISTRY DATA) ............................... 11 III. STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISE REFORMS ........................................................... 14 A. STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISE REFORM PROGRAM OF 1998-2000 ......................................... 14 B. STATE ASSET SUPERVISION AND ADMINISTRATION COMMISSION, FROM 2003 ONWARD ....... 16 C. DISPARATE STRANDS OF STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISE POLICY IN THE 2010S ........................ 18 Industrial policy............................................................................................................. 1 8 State-owned enterprise reforms since the Third Plenum of 2013 ................................ 19 Role of the Chinese Communist Party ......................................................................... 22 IV. CASE STUDY: OIL INDUSTRY ............................................................................... 25 A. REFORM STAGES .............................................................................................................. 25 B. IDIOSYNCRASIES ................................................................................................................ 27 Pricing .......................................................................................................................... 27 Appointments and appointment authority .................................................................... 28 Relationship to government/Party ................................................................................ 28 Waste and corruption ................................................................................................... 29 Profitability and profit surrendering .............................................................................. 30 Mixed ownership reform ............................................................................................... 31 V. CURRENT CHALLENGES OF STATE OWNERSHIP ............................................ 31 A. OBJECTIVES OF STATE OWNERSHIP ................................................................................... 31 B. OWNERSHIP, REGULATION, RESTRUCTURING, AND SUPERVISION ........................................ 34 Ownership and regulation ............................................................................................ 35 Restructuring and sector focus .................................................................................... 36 Supervision ................................................................................................................... 37 C. CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: EVALUATION ........................................................................... 38 VI. CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................................................... 39 3 Figures Figure 1: Industrial State-owned Enterprise Profit (and Tax) Measures ........................................ 6 Tables Table 1: SOSCE Data in Different Sources (2015) ........................................................................ 9 Table 2. SOSCE Share in Gross Domestic Product (2015) .......................................................... 11 Table 3: Number of State Enterprises and their Performance (Finance Ministry Data) .............. 12 Table 4: State Enterprises by Sector (2015, Finance Ministry Data) ........................................... 13 Table 5: Fortune Global 500 List 2018, Sinopec and PetroChina ...............................................